Quickly, a Saudi Peace Idea Gains Momentum in Mideast

By SERGE SCHMEMANN

Published: March 3, 2002

JERUSALEM, March 2—
After rapidly gaining momentum through the Middle East and Europe since its soft launching two weeks ago, the Saudi Arabian peace idea will descend on Washington when the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, comes calling on Tuesday.

At week's end, Vice President Dick Cheney will be heading for the Middle East, where, whatever his original agenda may have been, he is certain to be badgered relentlessly for some sign of American interest in the initiative, which comes during some of the worst violence to engulf the region in years.

As if to hammer home the menace, a bomb exploded this evening on a street in Jerusalem crowded with Orthodox Jews returning from prayers, killing at least nine people.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops, backed by armor and helicopters, took the war to a new front, raiding congested Palestinian refugee camps in Jenin and Nablus this week in search of militants and arms caches.

Israeli officials said at least 30 Palestinians and two Israelis were killed.

The Mubarak and Cheney missions are only part of the swirl that has developed around the unexpected proposal that the crown prince and effective ruler of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah, first made in an interview with a New York Times columnist on Feb. 17. Prince Abdullah suggested that the Arab world would offer Israel full normalization of relations in exchange for its withdrawal from all occupied territories. He said he had intended to ask the entire 22-nation Arab League to join in the offer at its summit meeting in Beirut on March 27 and 28.

Though the fate of the endeavor is far from certain, the speed with which it has swelled from a little-noted idea in a newspaper column into a serious force in the Middle East reflects the despair and the dangers that the conflict has spread through the region, and the longing to seize on anything that might point to a way out.

Skeptics -- including some in the Bush administration -- initially gave the floated proposals short shrift. It was not really an initiative, they suggested, but at best a nice idea. It was not new. It was basically a public relations gambit by the Saudis to polish their tarnished image in the United States. It would raise dangerous expectations. The Arabs would never follow through, the Israelis would never agree. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell at first said it was one of some ''minor developments that we might be able to work on.''

But with Israelis and Palestinians in a state of despair over ever finding peace after 17 months of unrelenting conflict, and with the Bush administration seemingly determined not to get embroiled, the Saudi proposal brought a long-absent gleam of hope.

It is not only the timing that gave the initiative its impetus. It was also the fact that it came from Saudi Arabia, the richest and most influential Arab state, and the hallowed home of Islam's two most sacred shrines.

From this grand pulpit, Crown Prince Abdullah spoke not only of diplomatic recognition, not only of peace, but of a ''full normalization of relations.''

That meant the fulfillment of a dream most Israelis had all but abandoned: ''economic and cultural cooperation; falafel in Damascus and stalls in the international market of Dubai; an Israeli flag in Riyadh, programming engineers in Bahrain and gas from Qatar,'' as Zvi Bar'el, the Middle East analyst for the Haaretz newspaper, sketched the vision.

''I wanted to find a way to make clear to the Israeli people that the Arabs don't reject or despise them,'' the crown prince told Thomas L. Friedman, the New York Times columnist. ''But the Arab people do reject what their leadership is now doing to the Palestinians, which is inhumane and oppressive.''

The idea went unnoticed at first. But then some commentators, experts and diplomats picked it up, the Israeli press began to pay heed, and before long senior officials were reacting seriously. Arab, European and United Nations diplomats began scurrying from capital to capital, many of them knocking on Prince Abdullah's door in search of confirmation and explanation.

Finally President Bush took heed. He telephoned Prince Abdullah to welcome the Saudi proposal, then dispatched George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and William J. Burns Jr., assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, to the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was also said to be skeptical about the plan, but as Israelis seized on the glimmer of hope, he signaled that he was quietly exploring it even as the battles raged.

The Palestinians openly greeted the initiative. A senior Palestinian official, Nabil Shaath, went off to Jidda over the weekend to see the crown prince, following on the heels of Javier Solana, the European Union commissioner for foreign affairs, and the American team.

Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, toured Arab capitals to gauge attitudes in advance of the Arab summit meeting. The mission was critical, since the Arab League works through consensus, and the presumption was that Prince Abdullah could keep his speech in the drawer, where it was when Mr. Friedman called on him, unless it was guaranteed acceptance by all the Arabs.